conferencing system: http://travel.epicurious.com/travel/a_homepage/home.html

Remember the six-hour ride to the beach complete with: your parents bickering over how to read a map? Your snotty little brother with a case of echolalia who kept on touch-touch-touching you? Sweaty thighs stuck to the vinyl seat? The mythic family vactions is an American cliché - nevertheless, it's a cliché that you never want to relive. You need to arm yourself with information to ward off nightmare vacations and Epicurious provides a travel site with a full battery of weapons. If you want first-hand accounts of the worst airports in the world, the tipping practices in Egypt or which Vegas shows are not to be missed, then jump into the converations in the Travel Forums. Arranged both by geographical area and by travel interests, the forums include travel professions (with a management eye out for people trying to sell travel packages, which is much appreciated) and individual travelers telling their tales. There's a good chance that someone there has already done what you're thinking about and is willing to give you some tips. For the obsessives, there is an area where you can call up the weather of any city in the world, find the best way downtown from any of 100 airports and make sure you have everything you need from a traveler's check list. They must have had my step-father in mind when they created this. Databases and conversations are fully searchable for the perfect get away location if all you want is a destination before your pack your bags and go.-D.L.J.

Subject: travel

Geography: global

Format: conferencing

Language: English

Cost: no cost